On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace

On Combat looks at what happens to the human body under the stresses of deadly battle and the impact on the nervous system, heart, breathing, visual and auditory perception, memory - then discusses new research findings as to what measure warriors can take to prevent such debilitations so they can stay in the fight, survive, and win. A brief, but insightful look at history shows the evolution of combat, the development of the physical and psychological leverage that enables humans to kill other humans, followed by an objective examination of domestic violence in America.

Leadership and Training for the Fight: A Few Thoughts on Leadership and Training from a Former Special Operations Soldier

Tested and effective leadership and teaching advice based on riveting combat stories from a Special Operations veteran. In Leadership and Training for the Fight, MSG Paul R. Howe, U.S. Army Retired, shares ideas on leadership that he has developed through extensive combat experience. Howe tells riveting stories of military operations and analyzes leadership concepts. He also gives advice on how to understand students and how to refine your teaching methods. Written with the unique insight of a Special Operations soldier, this book is the perfect guide for anyone interested in improving leadership skills.

Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life

You walk into a restaurant and get an immediate sense that you should leave. You are about to step onto an elevator with a stranger, and something stops you. You interview a potential new employee who has the résumé to do the job, but something tells you not to offer the position. These scenarios all represent "left of bang", the moments before something bad happens.

Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who in his perennial best seller On Killing revealed that most of us are not "natural born killers" - and who has spent decades training soldiers, police, and others who keep us secure to overcome the intrinsic human resistance to harming others and to use firearms responsibly when necessary - turns a laser focus on the threat posed to our society by violent video games.

The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team Three Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi

The Last Punisher is a bold, no-holds-barred first-person account of the Iraq War. With wry humor and moving testimony, Kevin Lacz tells the story of his tour in Iraq with SEAL Team Three, the warrior elite of the navy. This legendary unit, known as The Punishers, included Chris Kyle (American Sniper), Mike Monsoor, Ryan Job, and Marc Lee. These brave men were instrumental in securing the key locations in the pivotal 2006 Battle of Ramadi, told with stunning detail in this book.

Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach

What does it take to get the job done? How do you get the men in your unit to do what you say? To follow you into battle and shoot to kill? How do you build the confidence that spurs men on to do their jobs, to stand by their leaders and each other? Find the answers to these questions and more, in this classic for those who have to get the job done---military or not.

The unforgiving Afghan winter settled upon the 22 men of Marine Special Operations Team 8222, call sign Dagger 22, in the remote and hostile river valley of Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters in the region would have liked nothing more than to once again go dormant and rest until the new spring fighting season began. No chance of that - this winter would be different.

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

Gates of Fire puts you at the side of valiant Spartan warriors in 480 BC for the bloody, climactic battle at Thermopylae. There, a few hundred of Sparta’s finest sacrificed their lives to hold back the invading Persian millions. The time they bought enabled the Greeks to rally - saving, according to ancient historian Herodotus, “Western democracy and freedom from perishing in the cradle.” How did the Spartans accomplish this superhuman feat? This is what the King of Persia hopes to learn from the sole Spartan survivor.

How to Shoot Like a Navy SEAL: Combat Marksmanship Fundamentals

Each year in America, two million criminals break into homes just like yours. Is your aim good enough to guarantee your family's safety? How to Shoot Like a Navy SEAL teaches gun owners and their families the same deadly, effective techniques the author used to create the world's deadliest snipers. The book is designed to give you the most powerful methods in easy-to-follow instructions.

Way of the Reaper: My Greatest Untold Missions and the Art of Being a Sniper

Way of the Reaper is a step-by-step accounting of how a sniper works, through the lens of Irving's 10 most significant kills - none of which have been told before. Each mission is an in-depth look at a new element of eliminating the enemy, from intel to luck, recon to weaponry. Told in a thrilling narrative, this is also a heart-pounding true story of some of the Reaper's boldest missions, including the longest shot of his military career on a human target of over half a mile.

Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor

In 2009 Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after Keating's construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: It was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend.

The Way of Men

What is masculinity? Ask ten men and you'll get ten vague, conflicting answers. Unlike any book of its kind, The Way of Men offers a simple, straightforward answer - without getting bogged down in religion, morality, or politics. It's a guide for understanding who men have been and the challenges men face today. The Way of Men captures the silent, stifling rage of men everywhere who find themselves at odds with the overregulated, overcivilized, politically correct modern world.

Worth Dying For: A Navy Seal's Call to a Nation

In a fast-paced and action-packed narrative, Navy SEAL commander Rorke Denver tackles the questions that have emerged about America's past decade at war - from what makes a hero to why we fight and what it does to us. Heroes are not always the guys who jump on grenades. Sometimes, they are the snipers who decide to hold their fire, the wounded operators who find fresh ways to contribute, or the wives who keep the families together back home.

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin share hard-hitting Navy SEAL combat stories that translate into lessons for business and life. With riveting firsthand accounts of making high-pressure decisions as Navy SEAL battlefield leaders, this audiobook is equally gripping for leaders who seek to dominate other arenas.

The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander

As a commander of Delta Force - the most elite counter terrorist organization in the world - Pete Blaber took part in some of the most dangerous, controversial, and significant military and political events of our time. Now he takes his intimate knowledge of warfare - and the heart, mind, and spirit it takes to win - and moves his focus from the combat zone to civilian life. As the smoke clears from exciting stories about never-before-revealed top-secret missions that were executed all over the globe, listeners will emerge wiser, more capable, and more ready for life's personal victories than they ever thought possible.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

The celebrated 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, winner of eight Emmy Awards, was based on two classic books about the War in the Pacific, Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Audible Studios, in partnership with Playtone, the production company co-owned by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and creator of the award-winning HBO series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change, has created new recordings of these memoirs, narrated by the stars of the miniseries.

Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds

Southern Afghanistan was slipping away. That was clear to then-Captain Rusty Bradley as he began his third tour of duty there in 2006. The Taliban and their allies were infiltrating everywhere, poised to reclaim Kandahar Province, their strategically vital onetime capital. To stop them, the NATO coalition launched Operation Medusa, the largest offensive in its history. The battlefield was the Panjwayi Valley, a densely packed warren of walled compounds that doubled neatly as enemy bunkers.

In this revised and updated third edition of Unbeatable Mind, Mark Divine offers his philosophy and methods for developing maximum potential through integrated warrior development. This work was created through trial and error, proving to thousands of clients that they are capable of 20 times more than what they believe.

Publisher's Summary

The good news is that the vast majority of soldiers are loath to kill in battle. Unfortunately, modern armies, using Pavlovian and operant conditioning, have developed sophisticated ways of overcoming this instinctive aversion.

The psychological cost for soldiers, as witnessed by the increase in post-traumatic stress, is devastating. The psychological cost for the rest of us is even more so: contemporary civilian society, particularly the media, replicates the army's conditioning techniques and, according to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's thesis, is responsible for our rising rate of murder among the young.

Upon its first publication, On Killing was hailed as a landmark study of the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects the soldier, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.

Now, Grossman has updated this classic work to include information on 21st-century military conflicts, recent crime rates, suicide bombings, school shootings, and much more. The result is a work that is sure to be relevant and important for decades to come.

As a new platoon leader getting ready to lead 50 Soldiers into Iraq, I wanted to read something to get me prepared for a world which I know little about, the world of killing.

LTC Grossman presents a myriad of reasons soldiers will or will not kill in the vital moment. Although at this point I may not agree on the strengths to which each has, they all made sense. His section on PTSD, the mindset of the soldier after killing, and methods of overcoming both were extremely useful.

Although others may not like this book due to its lack of in depth psychological analysis, I highly recommend this book to anybody looking for an easy to understand look at the human reaction to killing.

I always thought I had a solid combat mindset and I still think so, however this book revealed to me how little thought I had given it. I now see clearly combat mindset is not so simple as knowing you will press the trigger when you need to. This book also gave me some insights into other generations.

Col. Grossman is a dynamic speaker in person. He reads the book in a conversational tone. This book is packed with information on the psychology of making the decision to use or not to use deadly force, as well as the emotional response to the aftermath. He is the foremost expert on the psychology of killing. I read the book several years ago and was not dissapointed by the audio.

I enjoyed this book. I have a history degree and I think this book, whether you want to agree with the thesis or not, should be required reading to fill in the gap between those who see war as the pinnacle or the scourge of society. I think Grossman makes a good argument that it is neither.

As a Soldier in the US Army, I was intrigued and hesitant about reading this. I assumed that the book would be biased and uninformed, but I listened anyways. LTC Grossman provides a deep study of the human condition and the effects that the mind goes though, before, during, and after the kill. Not only does LTC Grossman explore the psyche of the killer, he touches on the use of modified operant conditioning by modern militaries to train its Soldiers to kill. Then to top it off, he talks about how this type of conditioning is being implemented in our society today, and the potential effects that it has on everyone, including children, who are a prime candidate for conditioning. A MUST READ for Combat Arms leaders, so that they can understand what their soldiers are going through, and how they can help with the process.

Albeit, a bit "pop", and some ideas proposed at the end are a little sketchy ... this book seems well researched, -I spent six years in the Army-, very intriguing, at times captivating, and well written. I would highly recommend.

Most of the book is very engaging and Grossman is clear and convincing in his defense of his thesis that human's are naturally averse to killing and need to be conditioned to do so effectively in times of war. The anecdotes, mostly from soldiers, are very moving.

Unfortunately, he relies heavily on S.L.A Marshall's work, and the quality of that work is now seriously questioned. Worse, his final claim that the world is becoming a more violent place seems to contradict a large body of evidence, and goes against recent studies, such as Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature.

I still recommend it, for it is entertaining, although I'd balance it with some critical reviews.

It's an interesting book. It certainly looks at this issue from a perspective I never had before. Having said that though, I question the methodology and find the conclusions less than absolutely compelling. Correlation is not causation, and for almost everything for which he asserted a single cause, because of an existing correlation, I could think of an unexplained alternative. Perhaps he dealt with them in his research and simply didn't put it in the book, but if so, that elevates it only to the level of pop psychology which tends to oversimplify its subject matter in order to break it down into easily digestable bites for non-psychology readers. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it can give those readers insight into the human condition, which is almost always useful, but it can be frustrating for anyone with a background in psychology. Having said all of these things which seem negative, I rather enjoyed the read. It gave me a new perspective on the subject of killing. It made me think in a new way, and I forced a friend to read it so we could discuss the more interesting points.